With the approach of the 58th anniversary of the Normandy Landings right
around the corner we thought it would be appropriate to recite the speech
General George S. Patton gave to his men prior to the invasion. If you have a
problem with four letter words stop here and return to the index. General
Patton gave it hard and straight to his men, the men of the U.S. Third
Army in 1944.

Though his speech was deemed unrehearsed, Patton clearly knew it by heart,
though he kept no record of it. What you are about to read was written
afterwards by a listener in the audience from memory. A student of war, he
intended to inspire the men who would make the assault succeed. Here it is:

"Men, this stuff we hear about America wanting to stay out of the war,
not wanting to fight, is a lot of bullshit. Americans love to fight -
traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you
were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the
big-league ballplayers, the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will
not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win - all
the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed.
That's why Americans have never lost, nor ever will lose, a war. The very
thought of losing is hateful to an American.

You are not all going to die. Only 2 percent of you here today would die in
a major battle. Death must not be feared. Every man is frightened at first in
battle. If he says he isn't, he's a goddamn liar. Some men are cowards, yes!
But they fight just the same, or get the hell shamed out of them watching men
who do fight who are just as scared. The real hero is the man who fights even
though he is scared. Some get over their fright in a minute under fire, some
take an hour. For some it takes days. But the real man never lets fear of
death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to this country, and his innate
manhood.

All through your Army career you have bitched about "chickenshit
drill." That is all for a purpose. Drilling and discipline must be
maintained in any army if for only one reason - instant obedience to orders
and to create constant alertness. I don't give a damn for a man who is not
always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are
ready. A man to continue breathing must be alert at all times. If not, some
time a German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death
with a sock full of shit.

There are 400 neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily because one man went
to sleep on his job. But they were German graves, for we caught the bastard
asleep before his officers did.

An Army is a team - lives, sleeps, eats, fights as a team. This individual
heroic stuff is a lot of crap. The bilious bastards who write that kind of
stuff for The Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting,
under fire, than they do about fornicating. We have the best food, the finest
equipment, the best spirit, and the best fighting men in the world. Why, by
God, I actually pity these poor sons-of-bitches we are going up against. By
God, I do!

My men don't surrender. I don't want to hear of any soldier under my
command being captured unless he is hit. Even if you are hit, you can still
fight. That's not just bullshit, either. The kind of man I want under me is
like the lieutenant in Libya who, with a Luger against his chest, jerked off
his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand, and busted the hell out of the
German with the helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed
another German: All this with a bullet through his lung. That's a man for you.

All real heroes are not storybook combat fighters, either. Every man in the
Army plays a vital part. Every little job is essential. Don't ever let down,
thinking your role is unimportant. Every man has a job to do. Every man is a
link in the great chain. What if every truck driver decided he didn't like the
whine of the shells overhead, turned yellow, and jumped headlong into the
ditch? He could say to himself, "They won't miss me - just one in
thousands." What if every man said that? Where in hell would we be now?

No, thank God, Americans don't say that! Every man does his job; every man
serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important to the vast
scheme of things. The Ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the
Quartermaster to bring up the food and clothes to us - for where we're going
there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man in the mess hall, even
the one who heats the water to keep us from getting the GIs, has a job to do.
Even the chaplain is important, for if we get killed and if he is not there to
bury us, we'd all go to hell.

Each man must not only think of himself but of his buddy fighting beside
him. We don't want yellow cowards in this Army. They should all be killed off
like flies. If not, they will go back home after the war and breed more
cowards. The brave men will breed brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and
we'll have a nation of brave men.

One of the bravest men I ever saw in the African campaign was on top of a
telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire while we were plowing toward
Tunis. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at that time.
He answered, "Fixing the wire, sir." "Isn't it a little
unhealthy right now?" I asked. "Yes sir, but this goddamn wire's got
to be fixed." There was a real soldier. There was a man who devoted all
he had to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly
insignificant his duty might appear at the time.

You should have seen those trucks on the road to Gabes. The drivers were
magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching
roads - never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells
bursting around them all the time. We got through on good old American guts.
Many of those men drove over 40 consecutive hours. Those weren't combat men.
But they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it - and in a whale of a
way. They were part of a team. Without them the fight would have been lost.
All the links in the chain pulled together and that chain became unbreakable.

Don't forget, you don't know I'm here. No word of the fact is to be
mentioned in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell
became of me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even
supposed to be in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddamn
Germans. Someday I want them to raise up on their hind legs and howl,
"Ach, it's the goddamn Third Army and that son-of-a-bitch Patton
again."

We want to get the hell over there. We want to get over there and clear the
goddamn thing up. You can't win a war lying down. The quicker we clean up this
goddamn mess, the quicker we can take a jaunt against the Japs and clean their
nest out too, before the Marines get all the goddamn credit.

Sure, we all want to be home. We want this thing over with. The quickest
way to get it over is to get the bastards. The quicker they are whipped, the
quicker we go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin. When a man is
lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get him
eventually, and the hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't
dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep
moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one. We'll win this war but we'll
win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans we've got more guts than
they do.

There is one great thing you men will all be able to say when you go home.
You may thank God for it, thank God that at least 30 years from now - when
you're sitting around the fireside with your grandson on your knees, and he
asks you what you did in the great war - you won't have to cough and say, I
shoveled shit in Louisiana."